U.S. Has Highest Fertility Rate in Industrialized World

Why Is Fertility Higher in the United States Than in Europe?

(Population Bulletin excerpt, June 2000) The United States has higher fertility than any other country in the industrialized world. At the end of the 1990s, the total fertility rate (TFR) was about 1.4 children per woman in Europe, for example, while the U.S. rate was about 2.1. Yet surveys find that women in all these countries say they want about the same number of children, most often two. Why is fertility higher in the United States?

One explanation for the higher U.S. fertility is that many European countries have racially homogeneous populations compared with the United States. In the United States, fertility rates differ among the nation's varied racial and ethnic population groups. In 1998, the U.S. TFR of 2.1 children per woman was made up of several different rates: non-Hispanic white, 1.8; black, 2.2; American Indian, 2.1; Asian and Pacific Islander, 1.9; and Hispanic, 2.9.

Demographers usually assume that fertility rates of different racial and ethnic groups will converge as the experience and circumstances of women in different groups become more similar. The gap between the rates of U.S. black and white women has narrowed in recent years, for example.

Current Census Bureau projections assume, however, that rates will be higher for minority women over the next 25 years at least. Because minorities will make up an increasing share of the population, these racial and ethnic differences are likely to keep U.S. fertility higher than that in Europe and other more developed countries. Some demographers believe that European fertility may not remain so low, however, which could narrow this fertility gap. The TFR, after all, does not indicate how many children a woman will actually have. It is a hypothetical estimate of a woman's lifetime childbearing: It is the average number of children women will have if, between ages 15 and 49, they bear children at the same rate as women did this year. The TFR is a useful indicator of how people's actions "this year" will affect population growth. But it is not a good indicator of their actions next year, or the year after, as recent history demonstrates.

In the 1970s and 1980s, for example, a large share of American women chose to attend college or get jobs rather than to marry and have children in their early 20s, and the U.S. TFR declined to a record low. At the time, some analysts thought these women were postponing births, while others thought that these Americans would never have as many births as the previous generation. Although the final statistics aren't in, it looks as if most of these women were having children later in their 20s and in their 30s ï¿½ not eschewing motherhood altogether. Baby-boom women born between 1949 and 1953 had just over two children, on average, by their late 40s.¹

Some demographers think that a similar shift of childbearing to older ages is partly responsible for historically low fertility rates in Europe now, although others think that fertility might remain this low and that women in these countries will never make up the births they postponed.²

Many social and economic factors in Europe today might encourage women to delay or forgo having children. High unemployment rates frustrate young Europeans' high expectations for salaries and professional advancement. Housing is expensive and scarce. Work schedules are relatively inflexible for women with children.³ Will fertility rates in Europe rise closer to the U.S. level if combining children and careers gets easier? No one knows for sure, but U.S. fertility remains the highest in the industrialized world for the foreseeable future.

References

National Center for Health Statistics, unpublished data.
John Bongaarts and Griffith Feeney, "On the Quantum and Tempo of Fertility," Population Council, Working Paper No. 109 (1998); and Ron Lestaeghe and Paul Willems, "Is Low Fertility a Temporary Phenomenon in the European Union?" Population and Development Review 25, no. 2 (June 1999): 211ï¿½28.
Jean-Claude Chesnais, "Fertility, Family, and Social Policy in Contemporary Western Europe," Population and Development Review 22, no. 4 (December 1996): 729-39.

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